Gadgetory

this is the BlackBerry key one and yes it's a blackberry some of you may be thinking to yourselves how are they still competing in the smartphone market especially 2017 well to be honest I'm not really sure how to answer that question but here's what I think the company has been working really hard to design a smartphone that can compete you know pretty well against Apple Samsung and Google offerings it still provide the core features that BlackBerry loyalists are still fond of here's a fun fact the key one is my first BlackBerry smartphone and interestingly enough when it showed up at the studio I thought to myself that I would never consider using it as my daily driver but here I am a few weeks after reconsidering about switching to this guy completely because it is an awesome and solid Android smartphone so let me walk you through my experience using the key one as my daily driver for the past few weeks right after a message from our sponsor so it was kind of a love at first sight you know there's really nothing like this exterior I love the metallic color the tinted glass panel the RGB fans at the front it's basically a see-through case and who doesn't love that your graphics card can go vertical the top is radiator friendly and the right side is so unique when exposed thanks to these cable covers so you can show off everything you've got with the age 500 feet way cooler master check it out inscription below alright so let's get pricing out of the way the key one starts at $550 us and that's the Silver Edition that comes with 32 gigabytes of storage and three gigabytes of RAM the Black Edition that I'm testing is unfortunately only available here in Canada and a few other locations and it costs $800 Canadian which is an expensive investment for us the primary differences between the black and solar models is the minor spec bump so you get four gigabytes of RAM versus three sixty four gigabytes of storage versus 32 and the rest of the specs remain identical also do not that Blackberry phones use Android right now rather than a proprietary operating system and I'll talk about the experience later on ok the first thing I need to address here is the design and the build quality of the key one let's actually start with the design and that's kind of obvious when you take a glance at it for the first time it looks like a blackberry you'll notice that a feature is the signature physical keyboard the smaller screen to body ratio and compared to some other smartphones that are taking the bezel-less approach the side buttons are chamfered which might seem like a minor thing but it really adds to the aesthetics of the device BlackBerry has implemented the convenience key that's located right beside the volume rockers and it can be programmed to perform any action you'd like for instance I can have it open an app or set it to turn on the flashlight or trigger Google's voice search or even completely turn it off so Samsung you better be taking notes now the problem with this button is its placement and much rather have it switched for the power button that's on the left side of the phone because that would organ amah Clee make a lot more sense at least for me but I can assure you that from a feature standpoint it's a hell of a lot better than the big speed button found on Samsung devices the main chassis is constructed out of aluminum and it feels rock-solid in the hands guys this is seriously built like a tank and I wouldn't worry about long-term durability although the lack of water and dust resistance is disappointing especially for a 2017 release so I'm hoping that they'll include that in the next revision the soft textured back is a welcoming change from glass backs that I've encountered from other flagship smartphones this year plus it helps grip the phone a lot better but be mindful that it could pick up grease over time the four point five inch IPS LCD display was definitely an odd transition for me personally since I've been using smart phones with larger displays for a really long time either way the screen features a resolution of 1620 by 1080 so that's a 3x2 aspect ratio and that actually takes a significant hit with screen real estate there's really nothing much I can say other than the fact that you'll be restricted with the amount of content being displayed on screen especially when browsing the web or checking social feeds and then there's consuming video that took me a while to get used to because for one the physical keyboard gets in the way between you and the content and the smaller screen means you won't be able to enjoy native 21 by 9 content as much as you would would say something like the Galaxy S II or the new iPhone now in a positive note you can take advantage of the scroll feature built in with the keyboard to keep your thumb from reaching up and smudging your screen but if you do get the screen dirty and you know you will I recently found this the eye roller it claims to sanitize your device's screen while removing all the surface dirt by simply rolling over it at first I thought that the eye rollers claims were too good to be true but look at how well it works sure beats carrying around a bottle of cleaning solution and a microfiber cloth you can find a link to buy the eye roller in the description down below if you're interested coming back to the display on the key one the colors are just as expected for an IPS LCD panel they're nice and vibrant I'll be it not as super saturated as AMOLED displays I prefer IPS over AMOLED because they look more natural to the eye the viewing angles were great plus I didn't notice any weird color shift while tilting the display however the screen doesn't get as bright as I'd like it to be in broad daylight conditions so if you're intend to use a key one outdoors more often you're not gonna be pleased moving on let's talk about that keyboard because it's one of BlackBerry's key selling features in fact it's one of the main reasons why there are still some blackberry enthusiasts out there now for me switching from a virtual keyboard to a physical one took some time to get used to but interestingly enough I started to love typing on it over time everything from the tactile buttons to keyboard shortcuts like copy and paste worked fantastic it also has a few more tricks up its sleeve like being able to customize all 52 buttons to quickly access apps or important contacts directly from the home screen but be mindful that it only works when you're using BlackBerry's stock launcher now I typically run nova launcher on every Android device that I test and unfortunately I wasn't able to take advantage of those shortcuts I found that to be a bit odd but it is what it is the tiny space bar also acts as a fingerprint reader and it's fast when it comes to unlocking the device there are also other touch enabled gestures like scrolling through webpages or emails but that was a bit finicky with some other apps like Nova and Talon just to name a few the flick typing feature does a pretty good job predicting words so you can flip up to register the desired word or flick backwards to erase it if you made a mistake and I've taken advantage of that a lot of times during the process of getting used to this physical keyboard that being said I still missed a few features from the virtual keyboard one of them was Glide typing where I was able to quickly draft words by simply gliding through keys and Google was pretty good at that and it was pretty fast too the other one was instant access to emojis and gifts and jebal was pretty smart enough to implement that within the keyboard now you could still access emojis with the key one but it involves a few more steps to activate that plus it consumes half of the already smaller 4.5 inch display I also wished a blackberry included a dedicated number Oh for a quick accents but that would shrink the display even further so it's covered that and I've also had a few instances where I would accidentally trigger the home button while scrolling using the keyboard now they could fix this by replacing the capacity of navigating buttons with an on screen option so a that could eliminate those accidental triggers and be it would actually add some more screen real estate now be mindful that these are my personal suggestions but I'd love to hear your thoughts on the physical keyboard are you sold on the whole gesture implementation leave a comment down below the software experience on the key one was great blackberry did partner with Google to run Android OS on their smartphones and if my memory serves me well I think the privilege and roid with the key one you're getting an almost close to stock Android interface and I appreciate that I was able to customize the UI just like every other smartphone I've tested so that was awesome out of the box the unit runs on Android 7.1.1 but BlackBerry has promised the 8.0 Oreo update very soon now there are a few more features banked into the OS one of them is blackberry hub essentially it's a one-stop central hub that consolidates your messages emails calendar events social media notifications and phone calls personally I didn't take advantage of that since it isn't as robust or feature-rich as those individual applications but it's a nice inclusion nonetheless and then there's bbm which really isn't exclusive since you can download this app on any other Android device BlackBerry has pre-loaded the detect privacy monitoring app which is guaranteed to receive monthly security updates plus it constantly monitors apps so it alert you if an app is accessing your camera microphone or accessing contacts and while these might sound similar to what Google Offers BlackBerry has built a solid foundation on top of the software to ensure users data won't be compromised we actually have an entire section on their website discussing how they have taken some security measures with the key one and I'll leave a link to that in the description performance on this device was fantastic the model I have in hand is the black edition that sports the Snapdragon 625 CPU so not the higher-end 835 but in all honesty it performs just fine for what I do like checking email browsing the web watching YouTube videos the normal drill multitasking was fast and I didn't notice any slowdowns thanks to the inclusion of four gigabytes of RAM as for storage you have 64 gigabytes to work with plus it can be expanded via ready now by far my most favorite part about the key one is its battery life it's got a 35 milliamp hour battery so while that might not seem as big as the one found the pixel to excel si plus and most definitely not even closer to the new razor phone I was easily able to power through a couple of days with just a single charge how well the answer actually lies within the design given the smaller screen to body ratio and a much more power efficient CPU this thing can easily get you six and a half to seven hours of screen on time plus it supports quick charge 3.0 and it charges via USB type-c my usage normally consists of checking Twitter Instagram messaging responding to emails catching up in a few YouTube videos and that's about it but that could vary from one user to the next last but not least let's talk about the camera and I'm just gonna say it out right now it's amazing and if that sounds surprising to you especially coming from a BlackBerry smartphone well you're in for a surprise so the rear camera sports a 12 megapixel sensor with an F 2.0 aperture and interestingly enough it's the exact same sensor found on the pixel Excel not to be confused with the newer to excel I turned on HDR for the best results and left everything else in Auto and the samples you're witnessing right now are coming straight out of the camera without any alterations in post all I can say is that there's great dynamic range details precise colors are not super saturated but most importantly the sensor does a really good job exposing the highlights and it is a really good job in low-light as well the image processing is a tad better on the pixel accel to be honest but the key one does a really good job producing a cleaner and sharp image here are a few more samples alright guys so the rear facing camera can shoot 4k up to 30 frames per second but it doesn't come with image stabilization you can only enable image stabilization when you're shooting in 1080p but that's about it I mean the quality looks really good I mean I like the dynamic range like I said it's using the same sensor as the one found in the pixel and like I said we've got great detail here let's take a close-up shot see how it looks I think this is a solid camera well that was my experience using the BlackBerry key one you see this device isn't for everyone out there especially for the ones who consume a lot of media content because the 4.5 inch display is just too small for that task but if you're still a true blackberry loyalist rocking say something like the Prive or even an older device like the pearl or the bold upgrading to the key one makes a lot more sense in 2017 the physical keyboard is fantastic to type with and the built-in gestures is a smart implementation the build quality is just far beyond what you would expect on a 2017 flagship and when you pair that up with androids the latest operating system you're looking at a device that's designed to get work done now if you're willing to give the key one a try just be aware that there's a lot of things to get used to and the first one obviously is a keyboard you're gonna have to take some time to get used to physical buttons and of course getting used to that smaller display but other than that this is just an awesome Android smartphone in fact if you're looking for a BlackBerry smartphone powered by Android without a physical keyboard the BlackBerry motion is a great alternative albeit they just announced it recently and it's only available in Canada I'm hoping that they will include availability in the u.s. at some point later down the road but it's great that we have these options from a company that's kind of almost non-existent for a lot of people out there but I'd love to hear your thoughts on the BlackBerry key one what do you guys think about this device are you willing to spend five hundred fifty dollars on something that isn't as popular or sort of shares similar aspects of a full-sized flagship smartphone from Samsung or Google let me know in the comments down below on eBay with how it connects thank you so much for watching make sure to subscribe for more similar content and we'll see you in one